Forty years after the landmark Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion, the new documentary "After Tiller" follows the only four doctors left in the United States who are known to provide abortions in the third trimester. In 2009, their colleague, Dr. George Tiller, was assassinated while attending church in Wichita, Kansas. The four doctors depicted in the film have also braved threats, harassment and the emotional weight of the...

In an inaugural address many saw as a blueprint for a more progressive second-term domestic agenda than his first, President Obama vowed a continued fight for equality of women and for the rights of gays and lesbians, to push for immigration reform and gun control, to address income inequality, and to tackle the warming of the planet. Also speaking on the National Mall were Myrlie Evers-Williams, the widow of slain civil rights activist Medgar...

A new study shows hundreds of women in the United States have been arrested, forced to undergo unwanted medical procedures, and locked up in jails or psychiatric institutions, because they were pregnant. National Advocates for Pregnant Women found 413 cases when pregnant women were deprived of their physical liberty between 1973, when Roe v. Wade was decided, and 2005. At least 250 more interventions have taken place since then. In one case, a...

Five men have been formally charged in India with the kidnapping, gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old student on a moving bus. The woman was mutilated so badly during the rape on December 16 that she needed a gut transplant, but ultimately succumbed to severe organ failure. "I think it was a cumulative effect and a cumulative feeling of anger and outrage," says Kavita Krishnan of the All India Progressive Women’s Association,...

Today we look back at 2012. In the most expensive election in U.S. history, President Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney, forcing the Republicans to reconsider their policies, among others, around women and immigrants. While the major party presidential candidates did not take on climate change in any of their debates, it was a year of extreme weather — from the melting of the Arctic to Superstorm Sandy, to the massive typhoon in the...

We spend the rest of the hour with someone who has fought tirelessly for women’s rights here in the United States and around the world: Eve Ensler. Her new play is called "Emotional Creature" and is now playing in New York City. Ensler is the award-winning playwright and creator of "The Vagina Monologues" and V-Day, a global movement to stop violence against women and girls. Her new campaign is called One Billion...

As we broadcast from St. Louis, we turn to one of this election cycle’s most closely watched U.S. Senate races. Republican Rep. Todd Akin is challenging Missouri’s Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill in one of a handful of contests nationwide that could potentially help Republicans regain control of the Senate. Akin’s campaign has been mired in controversy since his infamous claims in August that women rarely become pregnant from what he...

You may have noticed that the Green Party presidential candidate, Dr. Jill Stein, was absent from the “town hall” presidential debate at Hofstra University the other night. That’s because she was shackled to a chair in a nearby New York police facility, along with her running mate, Green Party vice president nominee Cheri Honkala. Their crime: attempting to get to the debate so Stein could participate in it.

Broadcasting from Richmond, we look at a new law that could force many of Virginia’s abortion clinics to shut down. Passed last month, the so-called "Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers," or TRAP, law requires clinics that provide abortions to meet the same building standards as hospitals. Critics say the new rules are a thinly veiled attempt to limit access to abortion services because clinics unable to afford to...

On the 30th anniversary of the publication of "The Color Purple," we speak with author, poet and activist Alice Walker about her groundbreaking novel and its enduring legacy. Set mainly in rural Georgia in the 1930s, the book tells the story of a young, poor African-American woman named Celie and her struggle for empowerment in a world marked by sexism, racism and patriarchy. The novel earned Walker a Pulitzer Prize in 1983, making...